“This Should Only Take a Minute” Is Taking Years Off Our Lives

Every workplace has its own collection of pet peeves.

Sometimes it’s the colleague who marks every email as “urgent” when nothing is actually on fire. Sometimes it’s the meeting that somehow required six people, an hour of everyone’s time, and could have been summarized in three bullet points. Sometimes it’s hearing the phrase “this should only take a minute” for what feels like the thousandth time this month.

If any of this feels familiar, you’re not imagining it.

These annoyances may seem small in isolation. But according to new research from Dexian, they’re adding up to something much bigger: communication that’s meant to move us forward is often slowing us down instead.

The Fastest Way to Lose Credibility? Abuse the Word “Urgent”

When employees were asked to weigh in on a list of common workplace behaviors, certain patterns stood out. Nearly half of employees (49%) said they wish people would stop sending “urgent” messages for things that aren’t actually urgent.

That finding isn’t overly surprising. Most professionals have experienced this modern version of the boy who cried wolf. When everything is labeled urgent, eventually nothing feels urgent. In some cases, urgency even starts to get layered. Emails labeled as “urgent” soon become “more urgent,” something that has even turned into a running joke in The Office.

And just like that, a “quick check” of an email becomes another thing you have to stop what you’re doing to respond to.

Close behind was another familiar frustration: 47% of respondents said they’re tired of meetings that could have been emails.

Taken together, these responses reveal something important. Employees aren’t rejecting all communication, just unnecessary communication.

In an era when most workers are juggling emails, instant messages, meetings, project platforms, and text messages, attention has become one of the most valuable resources in the workplace. Every interruption competes for it, and people are becoming increasingly protective of where they spend it.

The Corporate Phrases We’d Happily Retire

Language has a funny way of revealing workplace culture. Sometimes it’s inspiring. Other times it’s “circling back.”

When we asked employees which workplace phrases they’re most tired of hearing, one response stood far above the rest: half of employees (50%) selected “this should only take a minute.” The reason may be obvious to anyone who’s ever heard those words immediately before being handed a project that consumed an entire afternoon.

Other commonly disliked phrases included:

• “Per my last email” (30%)
• “Circling back” (28%)
• “Can everyone see my screen?” (27%)
• “Quick question” (26%)
• “Let’s take this offline” (20%)

None of these phrases are inherently bad, but their popularity on the pet peeve list highlights something larger. Employees are increasingly sensitive to communication that feels inefficient or disconnected from reality.

When “quick questions” become lengthy requests and tasks that should “only take a minute” rarely do, employees begin to question whether their time is being respected.

Interruptions Are Costing More Than We Think

The workplace has never been noisier. Notifications arrive constantly. Calendar invites appear without warning. Messages demand immediate attention regardless of what you’re already doing.

Our research found that 53% of employees say interruptions, such as notifications and last-minute requests, negatively impact their productivity to a moderate or significant degree. Only 14% said interruptions don’t affect their productivity at all.

For organizations investing heavily in productivity tools, AI, automation, and workflow optimization, the findings raise an interesting question: how much productivity are we giving back through preventable interruptions?

Employees Are Creating Their Own Boundaries

Perhaps the most revealing finding in the survey wasn’t about pet peeves at all. It was about behavior.

Three-quarters of employees (75%) admitted they’ve ignored or delayed responding to messages or emails they considered unnecessary or non-urgent. At first glance, that might sound alarming. However, it might just be a sign of adaptation in disguise.

People are figuring out, in real time, what actually deserves their attention. They’re triaging requests, prioritizing what matters, and creating informal boundaries when formal ones don’t exist.

The irony in this is that many of the communication habits employees dislike most may actually be contributing to slower responses. The more noise enters the system, the harder it becomes for important messages to stand out.

What Leaders Should Take Away

The lesson here is simple. Nobody is suggesting we ban meetings, eliminate instant messaging, or create a forbidden list of workplace phrases.

Employees are telling us they want communication that respects their time and attention. They want urgency to mean urgency. They want meetings to have a purpose. They want interruptions to be intentional rather than constant. Most importantly, they want workplaces that recognize attention as a finite resource.

As companies continue to focus on productivity and performance, the biggest opportunity may not be adding another tool or process. It may be removing a few of the interruptions we’ve gotten used to tolerating.

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Dexian partnered with Attest, a leading consumer insights platform, to survey 200 U.S. working professionals across a variety of industries and experience levels on May 27, 2026. The survey explored workplace communication habits, common office frustrations, productivity barriers, and employee responses to non-urgent workplace communication.